Four years after he was part of the gang that kidnapped Exide chairman S.B. Ganguly from near the Agri-Horticulture Gardens in Alipore, Anant Rao, close associate of crimelord Umesh Singh, has fallen into the cop net at a Bihar hideout.

Confirming the arrest, Durg’s superintendent of police Ashok Juneja told Metro over phone that Rao, held on Thursday, has confessed to his role in the abduction of two prominent Calcuttans, Ganguly and businessman Sajjan Jalan. Juneja and CID officers described Rao as a “sharpshooter” of the Umesh Singh gang. “He is an extremely violent person and is suspected to have killed 15 rivals and traders,” a sleuth said.

After tapping sources for over a year, the special operation group of the CID, with the help of Bihar police, arrested Umesh Singh from his Patna home last December. State director-general police D.C. Vajpai said on Sunday that he had gone to Patna to seek cooperation from his Bihar counterpart to track down the criminals.

Rao had escaped to the Indo-Nepalese border after Singh’s arrest. “He kept shifting from one village to another for the past month,” Juneja said. The joint investigation team of state CID, Bihar police, Durg and Bilaspur police were keeping tabs on his movements after Singh’s arrest.

On a tip-off that Rao was in his Bihar hideout, near Patna, the sleuths zeroed in on the house and arrested him. Rao was produced in court and remanded in police custody in Bilaspur for 14 days.